Sonntag, 28. Februar 2016

#140 Illogical argument
"..the ball-and-socket joint used which most-readily facilitates circular motion over any other.."
If the joint did not facilitate circular motion, there would be no point in using it for this experiment. In order to prove that a pendulum goes into circular motion, it's a logical necessity to attach it to a joint that enables it to do it. The joint is not the cause for the pendulums tendency to circular motion: If you used a joint that only facilitated straight motion, you would only eliminate the motion, but not the tendency and you could even measure that tendency through a force that is acting contrary to the straight line. For all other claims made here, please proceed to #141.

#141 Incomprehension of scale + false claim
It is true that water in sinks and toilets in the northern and southern hemispheres does not consistently spin in any one direction. However, that is just a question of scale. The Coriolis effect is just too weak in order to measure it on a small scale with so many possible sources of error (shape of bowl & outlet, microturbulence etc.). On a bigger scale, the Coriolis Effect is proven to exist. Some of the best examples are the respective prevailing wind patterns in the northern and southern hemispheres...

...professional snipers

...or Foucaults Pendulum.

Also, Foucault's Pendulum does not "spin either which way". It rotates clockwise in the Northern hemisphere, counterclockwise in the Southern hemisphere and at the equator it doesn't spin at all.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foucault_pendulum

"If the alleged constant rotation of the Earth affected pendulums in any way, then there should be no need to manually start pendulums in motion."
The WHOLE POINT of the pendulum is to set it into motion against the "alleged constant rotation" of earth. If you kept your pendulum fixed in still position, you would eliminate any offset in angular velocity, the dot in the following picture would not move relative to the spinning circle:

#142 False claim
Again, the "blurry haze" is called refraction and it has nothing to do with magnification. Secondly, utilizing radio/radar we can thoroughly debunk the claim that we can't see the earth beyond the horizon because of atmospheric obstruction. And again, the following video sums up the logical inconsistencies of the so-called "law of perspective" and explains how radar/radio disprove the weather/atmosphere-claim:
(Start at 06:33. Warning: Harsh language!)

#143 False claim + Incomprehension of geometry
"If the Sun were 93 million miles away and the Earth a spinning ball, the transition from daylight to night would instead be almost instantaneous as you passed the terminator line."
If earth had no atmosphere, yes. With an atmosphere, clearly no, because the sun would still illuminate the parts of the atmosphere that are not yet obscured by the shape of the earth, with brightness gradually fading off in its opposite direction. And that is exactly what you can observe during every sunset.

I have also plotted the distribution of sunlight on earth to prove that the "spotlight"-claim is geometrically impossible (see map problem #34,35,43 etc.).

Here is the distribution of sunlight during June solstice (06/20/2016, 12:00 UTC):

You can easily verifiy that the plot is correct by checking webcams or skyping with people in various locations or simply by looking up the different times for sunrise and sunset on this website:http://suncalc.net/
Example: According to the spotlight-claim, Auckland and Cape Town should NEVER receive sunlight at the same time. However, over 9 months from August over December to April they do every day:

#144 Incomprehension of geometry
Following an orbit around earth, it is a geometrical fact that the moon has to turn during one night, relative to the horizon. When you observe it from earth and take its orbital plane as axis, however, it doesn't turn more than 1° during one night. It must have apparent "rotation" relative to the horizon, but that's because the orbit spans an arc across the sky. At the equator it rises top-up in the West...

... and sets bottom-up in the East (roughly)

That doesn't mean that it's rotating. It only means that your side of reference has turned 180°.﻿ It's apparent "turning" that you can observe over longer periods of time is called libration, which is a consequence of the moon's elliptical orbit, its 5° offset to the ecliptic, 1.5° axial tilt and your observing position (with 23.4° axial tilt). It oscillates over the course of one month and the moon will expose roughly 60% of its surface during one cycle. Never more than that.

(Yes, I know, this is a NASA-animation. For a time-lapse that anyone can do in his/her backyard, see #131)

This phenomenon is in no way contradictory to the globe earth model; it is in fact a logical geometrical consequence of the earth's & moon's orbits.

#145 Incomprehension of scale/geometry
"If the Moon were a sphere, observers in Antarctica would see a different face from those at the equator."
Let's calculate how "different" the face would be:
α = arcsin(6371/400000) = 0.9°
Not very different I must say.

#146 Incomprehension of the model.
Mr. Dubay kindly debunks his own claim himself by saying
"The Moon’s orbit is slightly slower than the Sun’s, but follows the Sun’s same path from Tropic to Tropic, solstice to solstice, making a full circle over the Earth in just under 25 hours"
Exactly. Well not exactly, actually, because it can be up to 5.15° away from the ecliptic (sun's path), but good enough..
So why is it that the moon makes a full circle in 25 and not 24 hours? Why is it around one 29th off from a full (synodic) rotation after each day? And how many days would it logically need to get back to its starting position? Guess what, it's 29 days and you just discovered the moon's orbit!#147 Incomprehension of methods
Again, apparent size (angular diameter) does not tell real size. You cannot measure an object's real size only by measuring its angular diameter with a sextant. The object can be three times as large and three times further away as you perceive it to be or a million times bigger and a million times further away. You just can't tell.

#148 Incomprehension of geometry
See #112.

#149 False claim + incomprehension of scale and geometry
Firstly, there are around 5000 stars in the night sky that are visible to the naked eye. Every single one of these is a Milky Way star! (Out of the roughly 100-300 billion stars that it contains) There is just a handful of galaxies (like Andromeda, also known as M31) that you can barely see with your own eyes, but they don't appear like stars, more like a small "haze". That is why the speed of the Milky Way is absolutely irrelevant. Secondly, the large majority of visible stars is even in the same spiral arm as we are, rendering the rotational speed of the Milky Way maybe not irrelevant, but it is clearly not very important when looking at the stars in our immediate neighborhood. Look here:http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/
"Throughout thousands of years the same constellations have remained fixed in their same patterns without moving out of position whatsoever"
Just false. Barnard's Star for instance can be observed moving even over the course of one year (slightly, a few more years certainly help to notice the change):https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnard's_Star

And again, scaled-down this is the equivalent of a mosquito (Earth) in Amsterdam constantly flying in a circle with a 1m diameter looking at a snail (Barnard's Star) in Brussels. Being the closest star visible in the northern hemisphere this also explains why the other stars being very,very,very much further away take very,very,very much longer to move noticeably and that the orbit of earth around the sun is nothing but an itsy bitsy mosquito fart compared to those mind-boggling distances.

Although the following video doesn't get the polar orientation of earth right, it does give a good impression of the changing constellations:

Mittwoch, 24. Februar 2016

#130 False claim. Pants-on-fire-false
"Let the tubes remain in their position for six months; at the end of which time the same observation or experiment will produce the same results - the star will be visible at the same meridian time, without the slightest alteration being required in the direction of the tubes"

Good luck with that. Because it's absolutely impossible. The only stars that will roughly be in the same position at the same time of night after six months are Polaris and Sigma Octantis. Any other star will be in a completlely different direction.
Anybody who ever bothers to look up and tries to repeat this experiment can verify this.

#131 False claim
Not only are the moon's phases always perfectly consistent with the current position of the sun, its spherical shape is easily evidenced by radar, the shadow print of craters at the moon's edge (please grab a pair of binoculars and see for yourself)...

...or by simply taking photos of the moon over the course of a month and stacking them into a time-lapse (the phenomenon is called libration).

Just like the moon reflects sunlight on earth, so does earth reflect sunlight on the moon. That explains how even the the areas that do not receive direct sunlight can be visible.

#132 Empty claim
"The Sun’s rays decrease the combustion of a bonfire"? Really? Is there any evidence to support this preposterous hypothesis better than "you can't see the flames as well when it isn't dark"? I don't think so. Because is nonsense and nobody experiences this.

"This proves that Sun and Moon light are different". Yes, the sun and moon light are "different": The moon is not as bright as the sun. Which means that there is less radiation. Which means that everything effected by radiation will be less effected when it's dark.

A simple long-exposure photo can show that the visible light coming from the moon has the exact same properties as the sun's light; the only difference is that it's much fainter and therefore you need a very long exposure in order to get the same result.

#133 Incomprehension of the model
"In full, direct moonlight a thermometer will read lower than another placed in the shade "
That can happen, but it has evidentially nothing to do with the moon. Make two equal measurements after two equally warm days, one at full moon and one at new moon. You will get the exact same result. Different temperatures at nighttime are a microclimatic phenomenon, due to different heat capacity and albedo of the previously warmed up objects...

"In the "Lancet Medical Journal,” from March 14th, 1856, particulars are given of several experiments which proved the Moon's rays when concentrated can actually reduce the temperature upon a thermometer more than eight degrees."

.. and no experiment thereafter could repeat this incredible feat. 160 years have passed since then and nobody has been able to repeat this. Because it's impossible. Even if that really is what it said in the Lancet. I could not find the original article on their website that contains this claim. It seems to have been made up by Mr. Rowbotham, since this quote originates from his book "Earth not a Globe".

#134 False claim. Pants-on-fire-false.

Wow. I have seen some hilarious claims so far, but this one certainly takes the cake.
Every ball that you can see with your own eyes is reflecting light. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to see it. Regardless if it is a baseball, a snow ball or a disco ball (or a giant moon ball). It's amazing that there are actually videos of people verifying this:

On the other hand, so am I here, writing this blog.. anyway, moving on.
Oh, wait, I just saw that Mr. Goudsmits (the one who made the above video) already debunked the first 111 claims of Mr. Dubay. I could have saved a lot of time if I had seen that before...

#135 False claim
Again, the moon is clearly never self-luminescent. It's phases are ALWAYS perfectly consistent with the current position of the sun.
(Picture not to scale!)

By the way, here is the distance between earth and moon to scale :

And again, just as the moon reflects light on earth, so does the earth reflect light on the moon, which explains why even the shadowed regions of the moon receive a tiny bit of light, which makes them visible at times.
When Mr. Dubay is telling us that "it is possible to see the blue sky right through the Moon", I am almost lost for words... Where is the atmosphere? Between the moon and the earth or behind the moon? Even on a flat earth it is between the earth and the moon.

"It is even possible to occasionally see stars and “planets” directly through the surface of the Moon!"

Again, good luck with that. Never has this happened. Of course it is possible for moving objects like airplanes, satellites, comets & asteroids to pass between the earth and the moon while being illuminated by the sun, but these are MOVING OBJECTS and can be clearly identified as such. Sure, looking at a photo you might not be able to make that distinction. But anybody with functioning eyes should be able to look up every night and clearly see that you cannot observe one single fixed star through the moon. This has never happened and it never will.

#136 False claim + incomprehension of the model
"The heliocentric theory of the universe". The model of the universe is not heliocentric. Solar system? Yes. Universe? No.

"Ptolemy in the 1st century A.D. accurately predicted eclipses for six hundred years on the basis of a flat, stationary Earth with equal precision as anyone living today."

Almost right. Ptolemy was able to predict lunar eclipses with certain accuracy because it is fairly easy to do and they occur roughly twice a year for every place of observation on earth, but certainly not for six hundred years. What Mr. Dubay fails to mention is that Ptolemy was nowhere near predicting solar eclipses, especially not with the accuracy we have today and, more importantly, had no valid explanation for his funky concept of planetary epicycles:

Thus, for a short period of time it is absolutely possible to see both the sun and the moon during a lunar eclipse. No lunar eclipse in the history of mankind has been observed at noon and that is because this is absolutely impossible.

#138 Illogical argument.
"Such is the case on plane surfaces, the lowest parts of objects receding from a given point of observation necessarily disappear before the highest. "
If the point of observation is lower than the highest point of that object, following this nonexistent "law of perspective", the higher object would have to vanish first. Apart from the fact that this "law of perspective" including the "vanishing point" is demonstrably not real, this claim is utter geometrical nonsense.

At no point should any departing object appear to sink down, it would have to appear to go up because the angle between the object and the observers eyelevel gets smaller and smaller. The following video sums up the horizon problem and the logical inconsistencies on a flat earth quite well:
(warning, harsh language!)

It turns out that the computed distance (18743 km) is merely 0.05% off from what you experience in the real world (18752 km). Not bad I must say, as the model didn't even factor in ellipsoidal shape. Here's what it looks like on a globe. The plotted distance and angles are quite consistent with real world experience:

Here's my plot of the exact same journey on a flat earth (azimuthal) projection:

I've drawn in the "shortest distance", which would lead you directly over South America, North America and Asia mainland. I've also plotted the actual journey using waypoints for each 30° step in longitude.
It looks pretty much like a half-circle. So we could estimate that it is roughly π/2 longer than the straight line (around 57% longer).

Now, looking at the angles and distances on both plots, please tell me which plot you would prefer if you were sitting in a boat and trying to navigate from Valparaíso to Shanghai.

It is my understanding that one of the two is absolute bollocks for very simple mathematical reasons. (as described in the blog #34,35,43).
The two following links can be a good starting point for your own research:

Sonntag, 21. Februar 2016

#120 Empty claim
Etymology-wise there is no reason to refer to Latin, then to Greek and then back to Latin again. The origin is clearly Greek ("wandering star") and what the Romans made of that word is an entirely different story.
Words have different meanings over time and are often nothing more than symbolic attributions. When ordering a cordon bleu at a restaurant nobody expects to be served a "blue ribbon", which would be the literal translation.

If you asked 100 people who knew nothing about constellations to give a name to a certain agglomeration of stars, chances are that everybody will attribute something different to it and nobody will call it by its official name, say "Pisces", which to me doesn't look like a fish at all, but more like a drawback-yo-yo. And still, the actual constellation has nothing to do with fish or yo-yos, even the stars within this constellation are further away from each other than from other stars. It's purely symbolism and percipience.

Before Europeans "discovered" other oceans, the ancient Greek word "ocean" was synonymous with the waters beyond the Strait of Gibraltar which we now know as the Atlantic. The Greeks believed the Atlantic to be a gigantic river encircling the world as it was known to them at that time. Today we know that they were completely wrong about this. They also didn't have a word for America or Antarctica because they just didn't know about it.
And even if you took the Latin word "planeta", how do you know it was referring to the surface of the planet and not its movement (since the Greek called it "wandering")? All planets (including earth) move on an ecliptic plane. So there is just no point in using only this word as a proof for anything regarding the earth's or any other planet's shape or movement.#121 Empty claim
The apparent size of an object is not its actual size. With a sextant alone, you can only measure the angular diameter of an object. It has NOTHING to do with its size.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angular_diameter

To be fair, if all you ever saw in your entire life were the apparent size of the sun and moon, both conjectures could be equally true.
However, there is more... and parallax, apparent positions from different points of observation, shapes, shadows (moon), planet transits (sun), eclipses, radar, speed of light, tides, seasons, nutation (moon), aurora borealis (sun), planets & their orbits, comets & asteroids (and much much more sun/moon-related issues) are all at odds with a flat earth.

#122 Empty claim
Most of the claims in this quote have already been falsified:
-The moving atmosphere (see #20,23&28)
-The sun's movement (see#53,55,56,58&59)

Concerning the spinning:
Centrifugal force is F=m*ω²*r. Because earth's ω is so tiny (2π/3600*24
rad/s roughly), the force is tiny, especially compared to F=m*g. Even if
earth was hollow and there was no gravity to pull you back down, just a
hair might be enough for you to hold on to earth.﻿
Given that one hair can resist strain up to 100g (F =
0.1*9.81= 0.981 N), you can solve F = m*ω²*r for m, that gives you
m = (0.1*9.81)/((2π/(24*3600))²*6371000) = 29 kg, keep in mind, that is at the equator. So
one single hair could be enough to prevent an object with a mass of 29 kg from hurdling into space, even if there was no
gravity at all. However, gravitational force for that object is exactly 291 times stronger.
And with m*g=m*ω²*r you can also calculate the
rotational speed you would need to actually be hurdled into space.
ω= √(g/r) = (√(9.81/6371000))*3600/(2π) = 0.71 rotations per hour, basically
one rotation every 84 minutes.
So if our days were 84 minutes long, we'd have reason to worry about the
spinning globe..

Concerning the wobbling:
The oscillation of earth's axial tilt takes 26,000 years. 2000 years ago axial tilt was at 23.7°, now it's 23.44°, in 2000 years it will be 23.2°. With a change of roughly one tenth of one degree in one thousand years it's clear to see that it just takes much more than one lifetime to notice any change.

Now to the core of this claim:
"This theory from the Government and NASA that the Earth is rotating and orbiting and leaning over and wobbling.." Here's a short timeline:

When was NASA founded? 29 July 1958
When was Sputnik 1 launched? 4 October 1957.
When did the first rocket reach space? 3 October 1942.
When did Tombaugh discover Pluto? 18 February 1930.
When did Galle discover Neptune? 23 September 1846.
When did Herschel discover Uranus? 13 March 1781.
When did Galileo discover the moons around Jupiter? January 1610.
When did Kepler publish his calculations about the elliptical orbit of Mars? 1609
When did Copernicus publish his findings on the orbits of planets? 1543
When did Hipparchus measure the distance to the moon? Around 150 BC.
When did Eratosthenes measure the circumference of earth? Around 240 BC.

How many independent government space agencies with launch capability are there in the world? 13. (Including Russia, China, India, Iran and North Korea)

How many people around the world have worked in fields of astronomy, physics/chemistry, aviation, sailing, engineering or geodesy before the founding of NASA? Billions and billions of people.

How many people have since around the world worked (including amateurs/hobbyists) in fields of astronomy, physics/chemistry, aviation, sailing, engineering or geodesy without working for the government/NASA? Billions of people. And that doesn't even include military all over the world.

The theory is older than the Kingdom of Denmark and that alone dates back to the 8th century. I think it is safe to say that the globe earth is NOT A NASA THEORY. And it's NOT A GOVERNMENT THEORY. It never has been and it never will be. The same way it is not the "FedEx theory" or the "Ptolemy III Euergetes Theory".

#123
Again, here is a simple explanation how the sun's observable behaviour is impossible on a flat earth because people would have to be looking in different directions:

Regarding the Newton-quote: First, its not the right quote. Second, it might be of interest to fill this statement with a little bit of CONTEXT!

Here is the original quote from Newton's letter to Richard Bentley, some time around 1693:
"Your assuming the Orbis magnus 7000 diameters of the earth wide implies the Sun's horizontal Parallax to be half a minute. Flamsteed & Cassini have of late observed it to be but about 10″, & thus the Orbis magnus must be 21000 or in a rounder number 20000 diameters of the earth wide. Either assumption will do well & I think it not worth your while to alter your numbers."http://www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/THEM00258

1) The distance to the sun was not known at the time because the precision of measurements wasn't good enough. I think it's a safe guess that Newton knew this and since Cassini (who he is citing) not only rejected elliptical orbits, but also Newton's theory of gravity, he had good reason not to take Cassini's estimates for granted at all. Besides, scientific collaboration was not really common practice in these days.

2) It wasn't until 1771 (when observational data of Venus transits in 1761 and 1769 were combined) that astronomers had anything near a reliable estimate of the earth's distance to the sun. In 1716 it was proposed by Edmond Halley to measure the 1761/69 transits in order to get a good estimate. And that's exactly what was done. However, Newton died in 1727. So again, Newton had no idea what the distance was and he didn't have the means of finding it.

3) We have no idea what question he was referring to. Maybe Bentley asked "Shouldn't we recalibrate our sundials with these numbers?"
To which Newton could have answered "Nah, doesn't matter, works either way".

#124 Incomprehension of geometry
The radial appearance of sun rays is a very simple effect of perspective. Every long pair of parallel lines will appear to stretch out as you get closer to them. Railroad tracks are a good example. You won't be able to tell any distance just by making the two lines seemingly converge.
If you looked at the sun rays in the following picture from sea-level, they would appear to be converging at the clouds, but they are not:

What you see is a reflection of sunlight streaking across the vertical center towards the observer like a long bar. In the "hotspot"-video you see the exact same thing, only that most of this bar is being obstructed by clouds. Clouds scatter the vast majority of sunlight while water reflects focused sunlight at a much greater amount.

#126 False claim + incomprehension of the model
See #49 for a short and practical explanation of seasons. This claim, however, questions the impact of distance vs. axial tilt on solar radiation and the appearance of seasons. So let's look at both, but well..

So we have a deviation from the mean of about +/- 3.4% for Perihelion and Aphelion. Seems quite significant. Now let's look at the angle of (solar radiation) impact for Tokyo (35° N) at noon:

3 Jan 5 Jul Mean (at equinox)
Tokyo 31.5° 77° 55°

With a given radiation area of 1m² (opposite leg of the triangle and depth both 1m) you get an illuminated area of A=1/sin(α) m². Now we can calculate the maximum deviation in radiation (in percent) from the mean value (55°):

There you have it. We see that between higher angles we have smaller deviation than between smaller angles (explained by sin-function). But more importantly, with a deviation due to axial tilt of 56.8% between equinox and perihelion, which is more than 16 times more than the deviation due to distance, you have a simple explanation why seasons on earth are caused by axial tilt and not by changing distances.

In addition to this, you also have a big change in hours of daylight between January and July; for Tokyo it's 9.8h during perihelion and 14.5h during aphelion. So you might even try to estimate the deviation of total radiation input (Warning! The angles change during the day, so this not a reliable estimate!):

For a complete picture you would have to integrate the respective curves of the sun's elevation angles over time (see chart below) for equinox, perihelion and aphelion and then punch the resulting mean angles into the sin-function. One would expect the deviation to shift in favor of summer because longer maximum exposure results in even higher radiation (notice the "summer-band" in the plot is larger than the "winter-band"), but this is where I check out. :-) It will also not change the fact that earth's axial tilt has a higher impact on radiation than its distance, so that's one for the geeks..

#127 Incomprehension of the model
If sunlight is reflected over water that is 500m away, there is absolutely no reason for it not to be reflected if the water is 10km away, other than a different angle of incidence that prevents this from happening.
The main reason for the light to be reflected in the form of a beam are the waves. When the angle of incidence gets low enough, a certain amplitude of waves from beyond both ends of the reflection can make the light appear to stretch. If the sun shines on a perfect level surface (without influence of refraction) it will be reflected as a spot. Add waves and you get something like this:

Refraction can only increase that effect. The different angle of incidence on a curved water surface over, say 10km, is 0.09°. That is negligible and it has nothing to do with the effect itself.#128 Incomprehension of the model
Again, what does Mr. Dubay talk about when he says the earth is "wobbling and spiraling"?

1) Axial precession of earth takes 26,000 years. What does that mean? Look at the following animation, it displays the orientation of earth's axis year after year.

Axial precession concerns the direction to where the axis is pointing, NOT the angle of earth towards the sun. It has nothing to do with the value of the axial tilt; only its polar
orientation, i.e. the orientation of earth against the fixed stars. That cycle, described in the following animation, takes 26,000 years.

That is why 13,000 years ago the axis pointed in the other direction, but, during one day, the sun behaved the same way as it does today, an equinox is still an equinox (although it occurs on a different spot on earth's orbit), noon is still noon and the sun's equinox angle at noon is still the exact same (when you only factor in axial precession).https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_precession#Polar_shift_and_equinoxes_shift

2) Nutation describes a small change in axial tilt due to the changing positions of sun & moon. It oscillates over 19 years and has a maximum value of +/- 9 arcseconds (0.0025°). Negligible.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutation#Earth

3) Axial tilt (a.k.a. "obliquity") oscillates between 22° and 24.5° over the course of 41,000 years. That means earth has "wobbled" less than 1.5° since the last glacial period of the Ige Age. 2000 years ago axial tilt was 23.7°, now it's 23.44°. That is a difference of 0°15'36".
OVER 2000 YEARS!

#129 Illogical argument
A quote is not a proof. Anyway...
It seems I can't stress this enough: Most stars are very, very, very far away and compared to the earth's orbital motion, they have absolutely no reason whatsoever to move noticeably other than dictated by the earth's revolution. The always cited "wobbling" is marginal, as shown in #128.
For practical purposes (that means within short timeframes, say one year) the earth's revolution is pretty much constant and uniform and it has been known since the advent of astronomy. It is therefore an absolute necessity for astronomers to fix their telescopes to earth in a firm and stable way to enable them to compensate for this revolution with proper tracking. There is no magic trick about this. Only a complete ignorance of the geometric scales and timeframes can lead you to believe that this can't work.

Samstag, 20. Februar 2016

#110 Empty claim
The fact that you can find a 2D-projection of earth where equatorial circumnavigation is possible, is in no way a disproof of a globe, nor a proof for a flat earth. You can, however, point out that distances (except for lines through the center), surface areas and angles on the presented azimuthal projection in no way match up with what we see and experience in our world (map problem #34/35). Magellan's journeys would have taken very much longer if you factored in the distances taken from a flat earth map; just like any flight that you take, especially in the southern hemisphere (flight problem #43 and many more).

#111 Empty claim + Incomprehension of the model
1) If the continent of Antarctica covers the south polar region of the globe (just like the north polar region is mostly covered in ice), how is a ship supposed to circumnavigate the earth from north to south? This is not possible on a globe and the fact that it hasn't happened, doesn't prove or disprove anything. It's a purely illogical statement.
2) As shown in #43, commercial airlines have no reason (geometrically) to fly directly over Antarctica. All existing available connections between Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and South America (Santiago-Sydney or Auckland-Johannesburg, you name it) have their shortest distances between each other not leading over the mainland of Antarctica. Here is Santiago-Sydney again:

3) How big is Antarctica? 14 million km². Let us please just for once put that into perspective. That means it is bigger than Brazil (9m. km²), bigger than the USA, China, Canada (10m. km² each) and almost as big as Russia (17m. km²). It's even bigger than the US and India (10+3m. km²) combined. It is a huge place. And not only that, it is also surrounded by lots and lots of water (mind the projection):

Now think about making an emergency landing in the middle of that. With the nearest big city, Melbourne, being 5.800km away (3.600 miles). At −63 °C (−81 °F). And that is AVERAGE temperature in Antarctic winter. It's huge, it's barren, dark (for half a year) and it's terribly cold. Making an emergency landing in this place means that you would be frozen to death long before anybody could reach you. Compared to the South Pole there is not one place on earth that is even a close match in terms of desolation. If you think Norilsk in Russia is a remote and desolate place, think again.
That is why nobody wants to go there. With the exception of scientists, daredevil explorers and maybe rich people who ran out of things to do. And these are exactly the people you find, when you arrange a flight and go there:http://www.adventure-network.com/experiences/south-pole-flights

Oh, and don't forget Werner Herzog, of course:

#112 Incomprehension of the modelhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fO1Vhc88QkM
Ok: How long is a day? Obviously 24 hours. That is the time it takes for the sun to reach the same longitude after 1 rotation of the earth. The big problem begins with the orbit of the earth:
When the earth has travelled a certain distance on its orbit after one day, would it have to rotate exactly 360° to complete one day, to look at the sun with the same angle?
Obviously no. Because it would have to rotate a little bit more to compensate for the distance it has travelled. Because one year is 365 days long and a circle has 360° it follows that the earth has to rotate roughly one extra degree to complete one day. That means, an exact 360° rotation of the earth doesn't take exactly 24 hours, but a little less.
In fact it takes 23 hours and 56 minutes. That's what's called a sidereal day:

So, yes, after roughly half an orbit we are close to a half-day off in our rotation. And that is the reason why "noon" after exactly 6 months is still "noon" because we are now looking at the sun from the opposite side! But only because geometry implies that there is a difference between a "day" and 360° rotation.

#113 Empty claim.
Well, just being unable to wrap your head around the idea that an invisible force can be strong enough to make materially seperate objects stick to each other, even when turned upside down, is in no way a disproof of the existence of that force.
The same way a person probably wouldn't believe in the existence of magnetism until being presented with actual magnets. Centuries ago many people wouldn't have believed that radios or airplanes could work because they had no understanding of their functional principles.
Again, calling something "magic" usually means that you just didn't get the trick.

#114 see #113

#115 Incomprehension of the model + False claim
"The existing laws of density and buoyancy perfectly explained the physics of falling objects long before knighted Freemason “Sir” Isaac Newton bestowed his theory of “gravity” upon the world"

No, they did not. Archimedes principle describes immersed and floating (not falling) objects. Galileo (with his Pisa-experiment for instance) came closer to the truth, but still didn't have perfect explanations. If you tried to explain a falling object's acceleration only by density, there would be no way to explain slower acceleration with rising altitude (even in a vacuum). Get a scale, weigh an object with exactly 1000g at sea-level, then go up
on a mountain and measure again. At 4km altitude you get roughly
998.8g. With decreasing air density at higher altitude (less buoancy)
you would expect an INCREASE.
The decrease is perfectly explained by gravity which decreases with
distance from the center of gravity squared:

And repeating this inside a
vacuum chamber will show you the exact value that is predicted with the existence of a
gravitational force: 1000g*(6371/6375)²= 998.75 g
(That's what the scale shows. In fact, the object's mass does not
change, but it's acceleration. The scale however is calibrated for
g=9.81 m/s² and will show less weight when it's 9.80 m/s² as in 4km
altitude)﻿https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_of_Earth#Altitude

And it's funny that Mr. Dubay even mentions buoyancy because, in fact, the derivation of buoyancy only works with gravity as precondition:

"Not a single experiment in history, however, has shown an object massive enough to, by virtue of its mass alone, cause other smaller masses to be attracted to it "

False claim. The first experiment to do exactly that is the so-called "Cavendish experiment", carried out and published by Henry Cavendish around 1798. Using a torsion balance, Cavendish was able to measure the gravitational force of attraction between two pairs of lead spheres respectively.

#116 Incomprehension of the model + False claim
A constant orbit of an object is defined by a certain velocity that creates a certain inertial (centrifugal) force, when acted upon by another force (in this case: Gravity), with both forces being of equal value. So, where is the object supposed to go? Following the orbit, of course.
The gravitiational force decreases by the distance to the center of gravity squared:

So for ISS at 400km altitude it's 9.81m/s²*(6371/6771)² = 8.69 m/s².
For the pull between earth and moon at 385,000km it's 9.81m/s2*(6371/385000)² = 0.0027 m/s²

That's why the moon even with its huge mass (higher inertia) needs less speed than the ISS to stay in a stable orbit.

See #115 as to why the "there has never been an experiment"-argument is illogical from an earth-bound perspective. You can't create a gravitational force on (and from) earth that obliterates the earth's gravitational pull. Secondly, there have been experiments. But in order to do these experiments, you have to leave earth! Every space probe (and ship when including Apollo missions) that has left an earth-bound orbit counts as evidence. I know flatearthers dispute all space exploration by and large. That doesn't change the fact, however, that the no-experiment-on-earth-argument is absolute nonsense to begin with.

#117 Incomprehension of the model
If you want to disprove Newton, you first have to cite him correctly. He doesn't say that "the larger object should attract the smaller to it and not the other way around ". His third law of motion clearly states:
"When one body exerts a force on a second body, the second body simultaneously exerts a force equal in magnitude and opposite in direction on the first body."https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton's_laws_of_motion

Therefore, the earth pulls the moon and the moon pulls the earth. And inertia is the key factor why the moon can be held in an orbit around the earth, while the earth doesn't experience much more of a wobble than the changing tides of the oceans.

#118 Incomprehension of the model

1) The orbit of the moon is not uniform. The moons' distance varies between 363,000km and 405,000km and not only that, the orbit itself rotates over 9 years.

And these are just the most obvious from the top of my head. And by the way, these are all observations that everyone can do in his own backyard. Mr. Dubay has clearly never looked through a properly installed and mounted telescope. Even with a hand-baggage-size refractor telescope you can observe enough detail on Jupiter to see it complete a full rotation during one night (10h for one rotation). If you're not willing to buy one and try for yourself, there are thousands of videos of amateur astronomers using very basic hardware that show enough details on planets to be able to see that. Even a decent pair of binoculars with 8x magnification can already show you the 4 bigger moons of Jupiter in different positions every night.

Yes, just for one brief moment, even the moon may appear disc-shaped to the naked eye. But that obvously means nothing. With a regular pair of binoculars you can already see shadows from the moon's craters that only work on a sphere. And anybody can put a camera on a tripod and take pictures of the moon for one month and he/she will see something like this (called libration):

As for the planets, you obviously need to take your pictures over a longer time. But you will be rewarded with great views of rotating, phase-changing and librating spheres.